Blackwell North America, one of the major book wholesalers to the library community, has decided against the development of yet another automated acquisitions system for libraries. Instead the company will develop interfaces between its in-house system and the systems of its customers. Among the systems to which interfaces may be offered are OCLC, RLIN, WLN, DOBIS, CLSI and DataPhase. The B/NA on-line file will consist of book titles which the company has handled on approval for academic libraries over the past five years, with additions being made as time goes on from actual firm orders placed against the system as well as new titles received in stock. Access will be available by author, title and series entries. The planned on-line service is similar to the B/NA New Books Status Report which is issued in microfiche format. The company anticipates demonstrating at least a prototype of the new on-line system at the 1982 ALA Summer meeting in Philadelphia.
B/NA also expects to complete the development of a fully automated Name Authority Control System by early 1982. This will make it possible to convert the company's COM (Computer-Output-Microform) catalog customers to AACR2 and to provide AACR2 records to customers of B/NA's retrospective conversion services. B/NA claims more than 40 customer libraries for these services.
